A family of British Muslims in a queue of people waiting to sign the book of condolence in London’s Trafalgar Square in memory of the victims of London’s 7/7 bombings, July 14 2005 (EPA)
LONDON (AP) – British and FBI officials investigating an al-Qaeda connection in the London terror attacks focused on an Egyptian-born chemist who studied in the United States and an 18-year-old Briton of Pakistani descent believed to have set off the bomb aboard a red double-decker bus.
Security forces in camouflage searched the Beeston area of the northern city of Leeds on Thursday as police tried to crack the network thought to have given the dead suspects planning, logistical and bomb-making support.
"We don”t know if there is a fifth man, or a sixth man, a seventh man, or an eighth man," London”s Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair told foreign journalists.
British authorities were seeking a Pakistani Briton with possible ties to al-Qaeda followers in the United States, news reports said. They said he may have organized the attacks and chosen the targets, leaving Britain the day before the July 7 bombings.
"Al-Qaeda is not an organization. Al-Qaeda is a way of working… but this has the hallmarks of that approach," Blair said of the attacks, which killed 54 people, including four bombers. "Al-Qaeda clearly has the ability to provide training … to provide expertise … and I think that is what has occurred here."
ABC News, citing unidentified officials, reported that the attacks were connected to an al-Qaeda plot planned two years ago in Lahore, Pakistan. Names on a computer that authorities seized last year from Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged Pakistani computer expert for al-Qaeda, matched a suspected cell of young Britons of Pakistani origin, most of whom lived near Luton, where the alleged suicide bombers met up on their way to London shortly before last week”s blasts, according to the report.
Authorities have now discovered ties between Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the July 7 bombers, and members of that cell who were arrested last year, ABC said.
FBI agents in Raleigh, North Carolina, joined the search for the chemist, Magdy Asi el-Nashar, a 33-year-old former North Carolina State University graduate student. The doors were locked Thursday at the building at Leeds University where he recently taught chemistry. And in a further international development in the inquiry, Jamaica”s government said it was investigating a Jamaican-born Briton as one of the bombers.
Britain paid tribute Thursday to those killed in the attacks with two minutes of silence. Office workers spilled out into the streets, construction crews put down their tools and held hard hats in their hands and London”s famous black cabs pulled to the side of the road. Queen Elizabeth II stood motionless outside Buckingham Palace and a crowd, many wiping away tears and bowing their heads, filled Trafalgar Square.
Trafalgar is about 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) from Tavistock Square, where Hasib Hussain, 18, allegedly set off the bomb that killed 14 people aboard the bus. That blast occurred nearly an hour after three London Underground trains blew up, and investigators do not yet know what Hussain did during that hour or when he boarded the bus.
Trying to map out Hussain”s movements, police appealed for information from anyone who may have seen him in or around King”s Cross station, where the four suspects parted ways.
They released a closed-circuit television image showing him wearing a large camping-style backpack as he strode through a train station in Luton, outside London, about 2.5 hours before he allegedly blew up the No. 30 bus. He had a mustache and wore jeans, a white shirt, and a dark zip-up top or jacket.
A separate photo of his face showed him with a beard, looking straight ahead. "Did you see this man at King”s Cross?" Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist branch, asked in a televised appeal. "Was he alone or with others? Do you know the route he took from King”s Cross station? Did you see him get on to a No. 30 bus?"
The young men traveled together from Luton to King”s Cross just before the blasts, police said.
Police officially identified two of the suicide bombers Thursday, Hussain and Shahzad Tanweer, 22, whom they say attacked a subway train between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations.
Both were Britons of Pakistani ancestry, as was 30-year-old Mohammed Sidique Khan. Reports say the fourth attacker was Jamaican-born Briton Lindsey Germaine.
Jamaican Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Wilton Dyer said officials were waiting for Britain to confirm the identity of the suspect before they could help in identifying his possible origins in Jamaica. "The British officials say they are not in a position to identify this man, they need more forensics," Dyer told The Associated Press.
Blair said finding those who planned the attack "is the absolute focus of the current investigation." An outside mastermind may have recruited the four bombers, provided explosives, helped build the bombs or given other logistical support.
The Times of London said investigators believe a Pakistani Briton in his 30s with possible links to al-Qaeda may have orchestrated the attacks. They believe he arrived in Britain last month and left just ahead of the bombings, the newspaper said.
It reported that the man, whom it did not identify, was thought to have chosen the targets. There has been speculation that the bombers intended to hit four subway trains, but that Hussain got on the bus instead because one Underground lined had been halted by mechanical problems.
The Times said detectives also want to locate el-Nashar, who was thought to have rented one of the homes police searched in Leeds in a series of raids Tuesday. Neighbors reported el-Nashar recently left Britain, saying he had a visa problem, the newspaper said.
North Carolina State University spokesman Keith Nichols said a person named el-Nashar studied there as a graduate student in chemical engineering for a semester beginning in January 2000.
Nichols said the school has gathered records in one place in anticipation of being contacted by the FBI.
Members of the FBI”s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Raleigh were working on the case, said Michael Saylor, who heads the Raleigh FBI office. He referred other questions to FBI headquarters in Washington, which declined comment.
While authorities searched for the chemist and the Pakistani Briton, British police were questioning a 29-year-old man they arrested in the Leeds raids. Britain”s Press Association news agency has identified him as a relative of a suspected bomber.
Two of the attackers had brushes with the police before the bombings, and one had been linked loosely to another terror plot, news reports said.
Tanweer was reportedly arrested once for shoplifting, and Hussain had been questioned for disorderly behavior.
The Independent newspaper, citing police sources, said one suspect, it did not say which, had been linked loosely to a plot to build a large bomb near London. It said police described the link as a low-level "association".
That appeared to be a reference to a ring cracked in March 2004, when eight men were arrested across southern England in an operation that led to the seizure of half a ton of ammonium nitrate, a chemical fertilizer used in many bombings.
People gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square waving the Union flag with the words “We are not Afraid” written on it, during a vigil for the victims of the bomb attacks on the capital, 14 July 2005 (AP)
A police handout image of Hasib Hussain, one of the four London train bombers named by Scotland Yard on Thursday, 14 July 2005 (EPA)